Colombia: Country overview Colombia is located in northern South America and has a total population of around 50 million; Bogota serves as the capital. Colombia is a presidential democratic republic, and the president is both the head of state and government. Iván Duque was elected the country’s president in August 2018. Colombia has a history […]

This article, by Anastasia Moloney, is republished with the kind permission of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Along the main square in this town, men chat over beer and billiards to the sound of blaring “Vallenato” folk music. Churchgoers attend afternoon mass and schoolchildren enjoy ice cream in the shade of palm trees. In the surrounding verdant […]

AOAV: Can you explain what the Colombian Campaign to Ban Landmines does in your region?  Mario Alberto Quiñones: The Department of North Santander, the Departamento de Norte de Santander, is located approximately 16 hours away from the capital in Eastern Colombia, bordering Venezuela. It has the most active border in Colombia and is one of the four […]

AOAV has met Álvaro Jiménez Millán of the Colombian Campaign against Landmines in Bogotá, to discuss the country’s ongoing violent conflict. AOAV:  Can you describe Colombia’s biggest challenges in terms of armed violence? Álvaro Jiménez Millán: Colombia has lived a long conflict. For almost sixty years we have had the presence of non-state armed groups, […]

Natalia Springer is a Colombian columnist, researcher and political scientist. An expert on Colombia’s internal conflict, she has extensively researched and documented child recruitment into the FARC and other armed groups. In 2012 she conducted an independent study entitled Como corderos entre lobos (Like lambs amongst wolves) to approximate numbers of children soldiers taken on […]

Karen Marón is an Argentine freelance war correspondent who specializes in armed conflict and international politics in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Marón gained international recognition for her work during the military occupation of Iraq, where she reported on the torture being inflicted at Abu Ghraib, and interviewed various resistance groups. She was […]

Professor Michael Spagat is the Head of the Economics Department at the Royal Holloway, University of London. He holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard and a BA in Economics and Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences from Northwestern.  He is also a research fellow of the CEPR, the Davidson Institute and the Households in Conflict […]

Anastasia Moloney is the Latin America and Caribbean correspondent for the Thomson Reuters Foundation based in Bogota. AOAV met her to discuss the problems facing Colombia, including drug violence and the widespread use of landmines in the country.  AOAV: Who do you work for? Anastasia Moloney: I am the Latin America and Caribbean correspondent for […]

Respect for human rights will be critical as Colombia transitions from conflict to peace, a top United Nations official stressed, noting in particular that the rights of victims must be at the centre of the Government’s negotiations with rebel groups. “It will not be easy to create a society that respects each other’s rights after […]

This article, by Anastasia Moloney, is republished here with the permission of the Thomson Reuters Foundation.   Under the gaze of a sniper, an elite soldier, with his finger on the trigger of an assault rifle, peers into a car at a sand-barricade checkpoint leading into Colombia’s southwestern Cauca province. Like most troops in this volatile […]